WELL; Personal Best: Easy Detection for Those Who Exaggerate Results

By GINA KOLATA

Published: September 18, 2012

first half marathon, and I was anxious and jittery. I had never run more than 12 miles, and this race went on for 13.1. How was I supposed to hold a pace for that distance?

My son, an experienced distance runner, gave me advice. Find some people near you who plan to run at your pace, he said, and ask if you can run with them.">

It was my first half marathon, and I was anxious and jittery. I had never run more than 12 miles, and this race went on for 13.1. How was I supposed to hold a pace for that distance?

My son, an experienced distance runner, gave me advice. Find some people near you who plan to run at your pace, he said, and ask if you can run with them.

So as we lined up on that chilly September morning five years ago, I asked if anyone was planning to run at a pace of 8 minutes 15 seconds a mile. "We are," a group of men said. And, they added, I could run with them.

We set off. It seemed to me that we were running kind of slowly, but they were experienced and I trusted them. We got to the first mile. It took us 9 minutes.

"Hey," I said, "I thought we were supposed to do 8 minutes and 15 seconds a mile." They told me not to worry. "We have plenty of time," one of the men said. I abandoned them and ran my own race. Later, I told my coach what had transpired.

"Everyone lies," he said.

Really? Why? Most people who are not runners do not know the difference between one pace and another - and don't care. The last thing they want to hear is a rehashing of your race.

But runners care almost too much, eviscerating those who dissemble.

In fact, most people do not lie, said Michael Sachs, an exercise psychologist at Temple University. That is one reason athletes often are so outraged when they catch someone who fibs about his or her performance in a competition. And these lies are easily discovered now that race times are posted on the Internet. Often athletes are quite cognizant of these results, tracking one another's successes and failures.

John Raglin, an exercise psychologist at Indiana University, competed in the Arnold 5K Pump and Run last year, an event in which participants first bench-press a large proportion of their weight - determined by age - and then run five kilometers, or 3.1 miles. The first time he went to the gym after that competition, he said, "someone came up and teased me about getting beaten for first in my age group by two seconds, and the 'accomplishment' of being the oldest finisher in the top 30."

The kibitzer at the gym wasn't even a runner, Dr. Raglin added.

So it should come as no surprise that Representative Paul D. Ryan, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, was called out recently when he told a radio interviewer he had run a marathon in around 2 hours 50 minutes.

"Holy smokes," said the interviewer, Hugh Hewitt.

"I was fast when I was younger," Mr. Ryan replied.

He would have been fast, if that actually had been his time. To finish a marathon in 2 hours 50 minutes, Mr. Ryan would have had to average 6 minutes 29 seconds a mile. But as the magazine Runner's World discovered, his actual time in the marathon he was referring to, the 1990 Grandma's Marathon in Duluth, Minn., was 4 hours 1 minute, for an average pace of 9 minutes 12 seconds a mile.

Runners reacted with some scathing comments. "He probably omitted the 'Half' portion of the race title," said a poster to a forum at LetsRun.com. Mr. Ryan is not alone, of course, in substantially misstating his achievement.

"Everybody like me who has been doing sports at a high level since they were teenagers can give you four or five or six examples" of extravagant liars, said Dr. Michael Joyner, a Mayo Clinic researcher who competes in triathlons. But gross exaggerations seem to be the exception. More common are those who shave a few minutes off their times or perhaps add just a few pounds to the amount they can bench press.

Often there are milestones - bench pressing 300 pounds is one, Dr. Raglin said, or breaking 4 hours or 3 1/2 hours in a marathon. Some who just miss are tempted to say they made those milestones. "They want to present themselves in an overly optimistic way," said Dan Ariely, a behavioral economics professor at Duke who has studied lying. Often, he added, those who shave a few minutes off a marathon finish rationalize that the faster time actually was their real time: They were just delayed a bit because they had a cramp early in the race, or they did not feel good so they stopped for a couple of minutes. They decide they can honestly just discount those few minutes when they state their time.

"People find excuses," Dr. Ariely said, and those who dissemble often start believing their own lies.

The group of men in my first half marathon actually helped me, or so my coach says. Because I ran the first mile slowly, I avoided the usual beginner's trap of dashing off at a pace too fast to maintain, then slowing down for the rest of the race, disheartened.

"They saved you," my coach said.

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.